Bacata and rafting the Rio Napo Tena..Ecuador

Trip Start Jun 02, 2008

Trip End May 01, 2010

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Flag of Ecuador Tena, Ecuador
Thursday, September 4, 2008

The next morning we traveled to Tena for the start of a short excursion into the Amazon . The road has been vastly improved but there is one part of the mountain road which is littered with crosses and little blue hearts painted on the road...each heart denotes a person.... its usual to turn a corner and discover without warning workmen laboring in the road...at one point our truck narrowly missed a head on with another truck if it was not for the lightning quick reactions of our driver we may have become yet another statistic....

Tena itself is basically a gateway for the amazon tributaries. On the surface the town looks a little shabby .. but there is some great rafting in the most spectacular scenery..and i became quite fond of it..in that grubby kind of way..

the river was crystal clear and seemed to be running fast (grade 3/4) It was still quite low exposing a lot of rocks.. but we soon got the hang of it on the small rafts (aided by guides from the ecuadorian rafting team) ... the river runs through beautiful tropical rain forest with lots of birdlife ..large water spiders cling to the rocks and occasionally leap across the water...There'se lots of time to float and play in the water between the rapids..but the sandflies are voracious at lunch time and will bite you and worse still they are so small you may not even realise it..... our only casualty for the day was T who ended up with a severe black eye not from the rafting but from a 12 metre jump into a pool where she landed badly...head first her knees smashng into her face . All credit to her she got in the raft and carried on ....

Later that evening we met up with the guides at the local salsa club - the yata bar . .Just a simple building with a thatched roof perched right on the banks the river ...banging out great Latin music...we danced for most of the night to a mixture of meringue, Bacata and salsa..half way through the evening a tropical storm broke out and water started to creep through the thatched roof. Looking out from a perch in the club high above the river i watched the rain pour down in the night sky..it had a surreal magical quality about it that only tropical storms do.... i felt an earthy closeness to this beautiful country and I began to feel a long long way from home...

at about 4.30 my stomach began to react to the toxic ecuadorian beer and i left rapidly for the relative comfort of the travallers lodge hostel...

Note...you can easily take the local buses to Tena..about 5 hours for $6, Go for one of the express Banos buses (faster than Amazones) and book a seat early else you may end up standing...also top tip dont drink anything before you go or just have a juice as there are virtually no toilet stops..